Life & Work with Rick and Teresa Schweinsberg

We started as Christian artists in Country Gospel music just out of high school and college with a full band in Ohio. We actually met when I (Teresa) joined the band, started dating Rick and got married. I was a special education teacher during the week, Rick was a DJ and operations manager at two different radio stations in southern Ohio, and we were on the road together in the band every weekend for 23 years.

We built a recording studio where he engineered and produced.  He was a nationally known songwriter during that time as well. Our marriage produced a son, Micah, who sang with the band from age two and strummed a little plastic guitar on stage, while growing up on a bus with his friends. I did all the booking, publicity, and radio promotion for our band, doing 200+ dates a year.

When we disbanded and left the road, Micah started his own band, but wanted to do music for his age group with Christian Rock. We booked and managed them for several years. Fervent Records of Nashville came calling and wanted to sign them to their label. Due to the terminal illness and death of their lead singer, they had to come off the road.

Micah graduated from Ohio University with a degree in electronic media/graphic design, but was also touring all over the world with a Christian rock band named Justified from Nashville on Ardent Records. When they stopped touring, he took a job with Jason Crabb and the Crabb Family playing drums and moved to Nashville permanently.

With our only child in Tennessee and Rick being offered a job at Daywind Music Group in Hendersonville as the manager of their studios, it was an easy decision to move to Nashville ourselves. Rick began producing Christian Country artists under our old label, Red Hen Records, as a part of Daywind’s company. He developed artists there for this unique genre and became known for producing quality Christian Country recordings.

I started a booking agency called New South Artists, booking some Southern Gospel  artists and a comedian for a short period, but teaching became too time-consuming to do both. Rick continued to write Christian Country songs recorded by several of his artists and released nationally.

Seeking to continue to produce and promote Christian country to a higher level, Rick left his job and took a short break when I retired from teaching. He worked for a brief time for Godsey Media, where they rebranded the music as Faith Country.

God and music have always been at the center of our marriage, even though we chose two different professional careers as our main income.  When I left education in 2020, that made time for us to start a new venture in music together.

We began Nashville Christian Country as a new label with a few artists. As our roster grew, the major issue the artists had was finding places to play. As the need arose, we reopened New South Artists Agency as a branch of the company, only booking artists who record with Rick producing.

Micah and his wife Jackie came on board to work with us on photography, video, and graphic design. I began vetting Country, Christian Country, and Southern Gospel radio stations who would play this style of positive country music, or what we like to call “country music with a message.” This helped with radio promotion and marketing on social media.

We tested all of this in July 2023 and began building the company from the ground up, trying hard to match the production, quality, and artistry of anything you hear from mainstream country music in Nashville. With Rick’s background in radio, we started an internet radio station, Nashville Christian Country Radio, to play and promote our artists as well.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Radio promotion and releasing new music has certainly changed since we were artists ourselves or promoting others. Long gone is the practice of stuffing envelopes with vinyl 45s and mailing them through the U.S. Post Office with bulk-rate postage. Internet, streaming, and social media have changed everything about what we do.

Researching and relearning all of what we did before and doing every aspect of it ourselves has brought some frustration and headaches. However, it has been fun learning new ways to promote and seeing the rewards for our labor. It took several months of making daily calls and building new relationships with radio and new venues.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?

When we began working in this genre, the one thing we all committed to upfront was having the best quality we could. It has always bothered all of us when music, movies, TV programs, radio programs, etc., with the name Christian attached to them, are done with less quality than mainstream products in the same vain. We want everything with the Nashville Christian Country name on it to be done with the utmost quality.

We use the same Nashville musicians who play on country music’s biggest recordings. Rick refers to them as the Nashville Super Pickers. Along with production, we also do artist development, including vocals, staging, live performance, assistance with songwriting and song selection, as well as instruction on self-promotion and networking.

We work with many of Nashville’s best songwriters, developing songwriters, and publishers. Our reason for quality control is found in the Bible in I Corinthians 10:13: “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” and Colossians 3:23, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord.”